Project Members

Antonia Soriente

Documentation of Kenyah

The objective of this project was to document, describe and preserve two endangered Kenyah languages, Lebu’ Kulit and Òma Lóngh and a Penan language, Penan Benalui all spoken in the Province of East Kalimantan in Indonesia. Previous fieldwork has consisted almost exclusively of wordlists. Yet a comprehensive description of Kenyah and Penan languages could only be achieved once textual data has been collected in at least some isolects, so an analysis could be made of its morphology and syntax. Recording Kenyah and Penan isolects in electronic form, transcribing the recordings, and describing their structure was not only be a boon to Austronesian studies and to general linguistics, but also instilled a pride of the language among its speakers, and encouraged them to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage. This, in turn, was a small addition to international efforts to preserve the world’s cultural and linguistic diversity.

One of the projects co-funded by the Culture Unit of UNESCO office, Jakarta, in 2004/2005 entailedof recording various types of texts, including oral literature and oral history; transcribing texts with the assistance of native consultants; analyzing the texts to produce linguistic studies; and last but not least, making texts available to members of the community on audio cassettes as well as in written form. Poems, songs, music, and dances performed by members of Lebu’ Kulit and Òma Lóngh communities have been video recorded. Finally, automatically generated glossaries of Lebu’ Kulit and Òma Lóngh have been produced, with a view to producing dictionaries of the isolects in the future.